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2013-07-06

Refashion Month |first| Sew along guest: Olga from Kid Approved

When I was planning this series, my first idea was to have a guest for every single day, from the 1st to the 31st of July. And I made a huge list of my favourite bloggers, to contact and try to have them. Some couldn't and it's understandable, but I was left with more days left than guests. I then decided I would leave the weekends opened and do a guest a day through the week.

But, then I was contacted by Olga, she was wondering if she was in time to join the series. I had announced it already so, another idea clicked my mind! The weekends! Of course! So, for people who wanted to join us, I have opened my weekends to them!

My name is Olga and I blog together with my friend Oksana at Kid Approved. I mostly sew for my four children with occasional selfish sewing for myself. I believe in creating children's wear that's unique and whimsical, but at the same time functional, comfortable and age appropriate. Since I am also a huge fan of refashioning, I am super excited to be here today as Magda's guest.

A few years ago I was looking for a basic beige top that would go will all my bottoms, mainly my skirts. I couldn't find anything until I came across a beige t-shirt at Target. I bought it thinking it would solve all my clothes dilemmas and then maybe wore it once because seriously look at this.

Yawn. Can it be more boring. It was definitely time to turn it into something else, like a t-shirt for Ania.

This is what I did.

1. Cut the shirt apart at the seams. Use your favorite t-shirt pattern to cut out a new shirt for a child. If you can save the bottom so you don't need to hem it!

2. Join the front and back bodice pieces right sides together at the shoulder. If you have stretchy material, reinforce the shoulder seams ( I use clear elastic tape), otherwise the shoulders will droop and not look pretty.

3. Position neck binding as shown in picture and stitch it to the neck opening, stretching the binding, but not the shirt underneath it.

4. Once the binding is attached, join the other shoulder seam. Make sure everything matches perfectly at the neck! Next attach the sleeves ( I chose to add binding to my sleeves as well). Turn the shirt inside out, align the side seams and the underarm sea, pin. Sew the side seams and the sleeve in one continuous action. Repeat on the other side. If you saved the hem from the original shirt, you are done! The shirt was cute, but there was no stopping me, so I added a reverse applique.

5. Draw the shapes you want onto the shirt. I used two hearts. Next, pin the fabric you would want to show, right side to wrong side. Basically, the contrast fabric would be inside the shirt. To prevent puckering, pin the tear away paper used for machine embroidery on top of your contrast fabric. Don't have that? Tissue paper works too. Slowly stitch around your shapes.

6. Carefully cut the top layer, so the contrast fabric is visible. That's it!